Galen the Chimpanzee - Highly evolved talking
chimpanzee on the sci-fi adventure PLANET OF THE APES/CBS/1974.
Galen (played by Roddy McDowall) spoke the English language and walked
upright as did the rest of his simian kind (an atomic holocaust destroyed most
of mankind but evolved the apes on planet Earth to a higher form of life).
When a time-warping spaceship carrying astronauts Alan Virdon (Ron Harper)
and Pete Burke (James Naughton) from the year 1988 landed on this futuristic
landscape of A.D. 3085, Galen befriended and protected them from enslavement by
his fellow creatures who saw "man" as an evil threat to their current world. He
later fled with the earthmen after accidentally killing an ape leader who was
trying to kill the astronauts.
Galen later fled with the earthmen after accidentally killing an ape leader
who was trying to kill the astronauts. At this point the program became a
futuristic version of THE FUGITIVE with a group of angry apes in hot pursuit
espousing the sentiments "The only good human is a dead human."
Galen (played by Roddy McDowall) spoke the English language and walked
upright as did the rest of his simian kind (an atomic holocaust destroyed most
of mankind but evolved the apes on planet Earth to a higher form of life).
Other monkey character included: Urko the ape (Mark Lenard), a military leader;
and Zaius (Booth Colman), an orangutan politician.
The TV series is based on the novel "Planet of the Apes" by Pierre Boulle.
Other inspired spinoffs from the book included the films:
- Planet of the Apes (1968) starring
Charlton Heston
- Beneath the
Planet of the Apes (1969)
- Escape from the Planet of the Apes (1971)
-
Conquest of the Planet of the Apes (1972)
- Battle for the Planet of
the Apes (1973)
- Planet of
the Apes (2001) starring Mark Wahlberg.
The animated series RETURN TO
THE PLANET OF THE APES/NBC/1975-76 continued the franchise of the 1974 TV
series.
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